[lbo-talk] Comrades and Brothers: Islamists and Socialists in Egypt

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 3/14/07, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> When I read the Islamist literature that was circulating at the London
> School of Economics, much of it had clearly been written by people who had
> an extensive knowledge of Marxist and socialist ideas, but had chosen to
> re-present them in Islamic form. All the concepts like underdevelopment,
> national oppression were phrased in ways that recalled the literature of the
> soviet-influenced Communist Parties, but under a veneer of Islamism.
>
> I have been teaching on a development Studies module at Westminster
> University. Many of the Muslim students express a broad anti-imperialist
> outlook, that is equally anti-Marxist intellectually. One challenged me when
> I cited Walter Rodney's book on Capitalism underdeveloping Africa. 'Do you
> think it is any good?' 'Yes, it's ok' 'But it is very Marxist', he said, as
> if that was an argument against Rodney. The same student denounces
> Imperialism, unequal exchange between North and South, repatriation of
> super-profits etc. without understanding that all of these concepts were
> developed by the left, before they were haphazardly imported into a bastard
> hybrid between Islam and leftism.

Much of ambivalent attitude toward Marxist theory, especially in West
Asia and North Africa, comes from a very mixed legacy of foreign
policy of Soviet Socialism and nationalist governments to which many
communist parties have been sometimes attached and by which they have
been sometimes repressed.  Many Islamists have been influenced by
Marxist theory, even as many of them have consciously rejected it, for
a lot of concepts from Marxist theory help them analyze the problems
they do want to address.  They just have good reasons not to trust
Marxists blindly, just as a number of Marxists, who have experiences
like Egyptian Marxists', have good reasons not to trust them blindly.
Very young Islamists do not have firsthand experience of Soviet
Socialism and its impacts on the South, though, so they can be open to
working with leftists, just as very young socialists don't have
firsthand experience of Islamists attacking Marxism and Marxists.
IMHO, it's good that such young people, who are not trapped by the
past and are willing to create a new future together, will eventually
be in a position to lead their respective movements.
-- 
Yoshie
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